We open in Angola. Waldemar Bastos spent years in exile and poured all of it into Pretaluz back in '98 (Arto Lindsay produced it). "Sofrimento" means suffering — and it comes out as this gorgeous, aching slow-burn of Portuguese-African folk. Perfect way to walk in.
Nuru Kane's a Dakar Baye Fall who plays the gnawa guembri — that big buzzy bass-lute he picked up over in Morocco. He mashes Saharan trance, blues and mbalax into one hypnotic groove. Easing us in nice and low.
Amara Touré barely recorded — like twenty songs his whole career — so every one feels like buried treasure. Cut with the Black & White Ensemble back in the 70s, dug back up by Analog Africa. Pure smoky Afro-Cuban croon, no rush anywhere.
Mbaye Dieye Faye is the sabar engine behind Youssou N'Dour's Super Étoile — basically the man who drives modern mbalax from behind the drums. "Bombe" is off Songa Ma (2002), his most-loved record: cracking sabar, call-and-response, pure Dakar dancefloor.
Over to Kinshasa. Staff Benda Bilili were paraplegic street musicians who built this whole record around a loping Congolese rumba. "Poliomyelite" is them singing straight at the disease that shaped their lives — and it's not sad, it's a survival anthem. Hits different.
Now we're in Mogadishu. Dur-Dur Band were Somalia's funk monsters in the 80s — synths, disco, and Somali folk melodies all crammed into the same song. Awesome Tapes from Africa dug 'em out of cassette obscurity decades later and the world finally caught up. "Dooyo" is the one everybody loses it to.
Cameroonian boogie from 1981. Pasteur Lappé built these spacey, hypnotic grooves — half makossa, half cosmic disco — that just lock into a pocket and stay there forever. Africa Seven rescued this whole run of records, and thank god they did.
This is the deep stuff. Poly-Rythmo were the house band of Benin — hundreds of records — and they laced James Brown funk with actual Vodoun ceremony rhythms. Those sato drums you're hearing are sacred. Raw, possessed, and almost impossible to believe it got cut in some tiny Cotonou studio.
Reniss is out of Yaoundé, part of the New Bell crew (Jovi's camp). She calls her thing Mboko — Cameroonian pop stitched together with traditional rhythms and four languages at once. "La Sauce" is bright, percussive and a straight-up good time.
Jupiter Bokondji's a Kinshasa lifer — his band Okwess play this muscular Congolese rock-funk built on old trance rhythms nobody else digs into. "Ofakombolo" is off Kin Sonic (2017), the record where Damon Albarn and Warren Ellis dropped by to guest. Heavy, hypnotic, alive.
Mariem Hassan was the voice of the Sahrawi — the exiled people of Western Sahara. El Aaiun Egdat (2012) bent their traditional haul music toward blues and the fire of the Arab Spring. Raw desert power over electric guitar and hand drums; nothing else here sounds like it.
And here's now. Amapiano — South Africa's sound of the last few years, all deep log-drums and patient, breathing space. Kabza De Small basically built the genre; Young Stunna sings over the top of it like it's gospel. Brings the whole listen right up to the present.